Enhancing remote patient monitoring with intelligent wearable skin patches

By Oriana Di Marco, STMicroelectronics, Smart Industrials, Global Medical & Healthcare Segment Leader, Marketing & System Applications

This article originally appeared in the January'25 magazine issue of Electronic Specifier Design – see ES's Magazine Archives for more featured publications.

Introduction

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is gaining more attention due to its ability to monitor vital signs and other key parameters outside the hospital environment under medical supervision. RPM encompasses various applications, including chronic diseases,  rehabilitation, maternal/fetal monitoring, elderly care, and more.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of solutions addressing remote patient monitoring has surged, reflecting the need to balance technological innovation with the immediate need to enhance healthcare efficiency. This shift enables ‘Hospital to Home’ monitoring, helping patients use existing or new technological solutions in their daily lives.

Emerging startups in medtech and biopharma, as well as market players, are exploring what makes RPM effective. This includes ease of use for clinicians and patients, integration into clinical workflows, adaptation to specific requirements, and ensuring data privacy and security.

The promise of RPM has two main directions

1. Promoting healthier generations by adopting available technologies to maintain a healthy lifestyle
2. Providing constant monitoring and fast response to health conditions for those with chronic diseases like cardiac, respiratory, and diabetes, facilitating quicker interaction with physicians

However, despite progress and the availability of several technological solutions, devices are still cumbersome and not easy to use for all populations. Patients often need to carry out recurrent diagnostic testing at hospitals.

For cardiac diseases, inpatient ECG process monitoring has several limitations due to its resource-intensive application, the need for qualified specialists at all stages, time-consuming in-hospital management and follow-up visits, maintenance of the equipment, and inefficiencies due to many manual operations and lack of intelligent systems.

Features of intelligent electronic skin patch reference design

Among the form factors available in the market, such as rings, wearables, watches, and apparel, electronic skin patches for cardiac monitoring represent a revolutionary approach to RPM. These patches enable better interaction with the user and are more suitable for direct contact with the skin.

The STMicroelectronics’ e-skin patch reference design, developed in collaboration with DuPont Healthcare, addresses specific system-design limitations and looks forward to advancements in this technology in the coming years. Various electronic features have been implemented to enhance its functionality.

Why this is a platform: this patch design can be easily adapted to various design formats and applications beyond cardiac monitoring. It supports the integration of different sensors, ranging from imaging to ultrasound sensing. Communication technologies such as BLE, NB-IoT, or NFC can also be implemented. This flexibility allows the transition from existing commercial rigid-box patches to future fully flexible electronic designs.

Why you don’t need two components to measure biosignals

Embedded analog front end: the analog front end used to detect biosignals is not a separate component but is embedded within a motion sensor.

• Unique combination: this unique combination of motion sensing and bio-signal detection holds great potential. It enables the understanding of the context of bio-signal analysis by tracking what the user or patient is doing in their daily life.
• Integrated design: the integrated design of these two components allows for the detection of multiple functionalities, such as electrical signals (via embedded analog front ends) and mechanical cardiac signals (heart sounds via the embedded accelerometer or seismocardiogram). This synchronisation eliminates the need for multiple devices, reduces costs, and optimises system design.
• Efficiency and convenience: having a single, multiparametric device improves system efficiency, ease of use, and patient comfort.
• Multiparametric monitoring: this platform design features a semi-flexible electronic board that can be adapted to monitor either a single parameter or multiple parameters. By changing the electronic content, the patch can be specialised for specific applications or used to monitor multiple vital signs simultaneously in a simple and cost-effective manner.
• User-device interaction: enhancing user interaction and convenience is key to making this device easy to use and truly beneficial. Simplifying the relationship with the medical device is crucial. One advanced feature of this e-skin patch platform is the ability to activate the patch via voice command using bone conduction.
• Intelligent system: one of the most significant features of this e-skin patch is its intelligent capabilities, thanks to It is tailored to understand health problems and trigger specific events accordingly. For example, if the user’s cardiac parameters deviate from normal patterns, the patch can determine whether this change falls within a normal variation range or is due to specific activities, such as exercise. It can then activate specific measurements after events like stressful situations or movements. This is particularly useful in
  contexts like diabetes, where user mobility has a strong impact on health conditions and needs to be monitored. The patch can detect anomaly patterns in ECG readings and perform anomaly pattern classification in ECG.

GenAI-assisted tools and predictive capabilities integration: recently, ST has integrated GenAI capabilities into its e-skin patch platform.

• Generative AI for cardio monitoring: this integration leverages the potential of generative AI on cardio monitoring data to assist physicians during heart cycle examinations. Specialists can inquire about the presence of anomaly patterns, types of patterns, therapy suggestions, lifestyle recommendations, and more. Additionally, they can request the system to monitor specific pathologies and generate related alarms
• Local script execution: the GenAI-assisted tool can generate scripts that execute locally on the patch to detect specific heart malfunctions. This offers predictive capabilities, making the patch a powerful instrument for compliance checks to therapy
• Predictive capabilities: the predictive capabilities provided by this patch design make it a powerful tool for the early detection of potential health issues

Future outlook

STMicroelectronics’ board design for electronic skin patches. Board encapsulation, snap electrodes and dry electrodes from DuPont Healthcare

Remote patient monitoring and wearable technology hold great potential.

Technological advancements can enable key functionalities to make home monitoring a reality, thereby boosting healthcare efficiency and efficacy at hospitals and supporting healthcare professionals.

Future developments and innovations in electronic skin patches will focus on personalised measurement tailored to the patient and the specific disease. This approach will be pivotal in medicine and drug development, shifting the focus from treating the disease to treating the patient, considering their intrinsic unique variability.

Conclusion

Among the variety of wearable devices for monitoring health conditions, advanced electronic skin patches offer distinct advantages due to their direct contact with the patient’s skin. The latest ST-Dupont e-skin patch reference design integrates biosignal  measurements and motion detection into a single device, featuring intelligent capabilities and GenAI integration. This platform design can be adapted and tailored to different applications, forms, electronic contents, and body placements.

Physicians, MedTech, pharma, and all healthcare stakeholders can benefit from these technological advancements, supporting healthcare specialists in improving patient care and outcomes.